Flying in a bus to Uganda

I have a friend who loves to tell this joke of a priest and a taxi driver. The two arrive in heaven, and God lets the taxi driver into the VIP whilst the priest just gets general membership. The priest is upset and asks, 'How come he gets into VIP?' God responds, 'Because when you preached people fell asleep, but when he drove people prayed hard!'

That about sums up my 14 hour bus ride from Nairobi to Kampala. I took the 8pm bus from Nairobi on Kampala coaches. I had the pleasure of sitting right behind the driver and that meant two things. Firstly because he has to keep his window open, I got the refreshing breeze and occasional shower from the rain, secondly I got a full view of the bumpy road ahead. I know no one will believe me, but I literally held my breath for all 14 hours!

Okay, let me not be too dramatic. For the first 4 hours we were on a normal road, actually even better than some roads I've been on back home. After my day in Nairobi and seeing how cool Kenya is, I was starting to convince myself that I might just move here one of these days...

But then we turned left. The image reminded me of the movie Wrong Turn, or this one time my friends and I got lost going to a party at Strawberry Farm. Everything just turned dark and the road became bumpy. Something about the road we were suddenly on didn't seem quite right. The road went from tar to concrete, and we were on a steep slope headed down-wards. It was at this point that our dear driver decided to increase the speed. This might have been normal if everyone we passed coming the opposite direction didn't hoot and flash their lights in an 'Is this guy crazy' gesture. The potholes on this stretch of the road were insane, but our driver, I must say knows his stuff! He was like Schumacher on that road, oh and did I mention that he was smoking? I sat there judging him for the first hour but watching him down that crazy downward slope, I was like: 'Do you! Whatever it takes to get us through this,' He'd be dodging a pot-hole with one hand and holding a cigarette with the other, incredible!

Now my imagination is telling me one thing, if anything goes wrong, civilisation as I know it is up there, we've been heading downwards for like a good 2 hours now, so it might be a while before anyone comes to our rescue. I must remember to google images of the area, maybe in the daytime it's not as terrifying as it was at 2am.

I love being on a bus at night, coz I can cover a long distance and save on accommodation, but I did miss out on most of the Kenyan landscape. From the little I could see each time I took my eye from our driver, it's quite rich and green. I passed by Obama's family's hometown (Kisumu) didn't even manage to get a pic, well all I saw was the Total garage really, no statue of Obama or anything to blog home about,

Oh, and then we reached the border. In the slim chance that my mom reads this blog, I can't actually mention WHY, but I found myself in that awkward situation where this police-man threatened to take me to court (hope no imaginations are running wild, it was the most ordinary thing, but well, at the border it's kinda illegal). I hang my head in shame as I admit, he wanted a $20 bribe and I bargained him down to $5. All's well that ends well, I made it to Uganda! I can't find my phone's cable so I don't know when I can upload the pics,